A veterans organization is suing
the Pentagon for exposing private details about troops’ military service on “a
truly massive scale” due to lax security on one of its websites.

[…]

The Servicemembers Civil Relief
Act website, which
according to the Pentagon receives more than 2.3 billion searches a year, is
mean to be used (sic) by authorized institutions like banks to confirm the
active duty status that entitles service members to certain protections.

Instead, the information is
available to con artists and scammers who can use it to impersonate government
or other officials and gain veterans’ trust by discussing details of their
service that only authorized organizations would have.

…Matwyshyn said
the entertainment industry is a prime target for hackers because the stakes are
high, and those who work in the industry may not be paying close attention to
internet security practices. It’s
relatively easy to send a “phishing” email to a studio executive, advising them
to click on a link. And just like that,
hackers are in.

Something for my Digital Forensics class to discuss. (As in a Research Paper.) Has that video been manipulated?Is that really Forrest Gump standing next to
the president?

Fayteq, a small German startup that develops technologies
for video manipulation, has shut down all sales of its products and services, according to its website. Deutsche Startups reported
this morning that the company, based in central Germany's Erfurt, has in
fact been acquired by Facebook. The
social media giant later confirmed the acquisition with the news site Variety.

…According to
Siegfried Vater, a business angel and partner of Fayteq, the startup offered
"innovative technologies in the area of off-line and real-time video
manipulation, removing the border between reality and fiction." He also writes that the company provides (or
used to provide, at least) "sophisticated solutions for digital product
placement, i.e. insertion and replacement of advertisements, seamless object insertion in and removal from video
streams as well as logo removal from video sequences".

What is “appropriate drone behavior” under International
law or perhaps the law of the sea?

Beijing is using underwater drones in the South China Sea to
show off its might

Late last month, Beijing dropped a dozen underwater
drones, also known as unmanned underwater vehicles, in an unspecified location
in the international waterway to carry out "scientific observations,"
state-run media outlet Xinhua reported.

The torpedo-shaped vehicles — called Haiyi, or sea wings
in Mandarin — will remain underwater for a month, according to reports. In March, one device hit a depth of 6,329
meters, breaking an earlier record held by a U.S. vessel, Xinhua said.

Scientific purposes may be the official line from Chinese
President Xi Jinping's
administration, but political intentions can't be ignored. According to one theory, underwater drones are
being utilized as a symbol of supremacy.

"It is a clear attempt to signal a capability
associated with leading powers in terms of technology, which often translates
to prestige," said Margaret Kosal, an associate professor at Georgia Tech
who specializes in the role of emerging technologies for security.

I’ll wager that Walmart was “not amused.” I wonder if the monitor all social media for
similar “pranks?”

The world's largest retailer said Friday an internal
investigation determined without a doubt that the company was pranked when a
photograph emerged on social media showing a sign reading "Own The School
Year Like A Hero" atop a gun case in a store.

"We have definite proof it was a prank," Walmart
spokesman Charles Crowson told The Associated Press on Friday evening.

The photograph on social media included Walmart's
superhero-themed, back-to-school promotion with a gun rack in a sporting goods
section. Initially, the company
apologized and said the sign was being taken down but then began to question
whether it had been there at all.

The iconic brand is one of roughly a thousand online
publishers that are set to receive an email from Google warning them that they
are showing "highly annoying, misleading or harmful" ads. Although there aren't many ads on Betty
Crocker's website, it does have popups, especially on its mobile site.

And that's in violation of the Better Ads Standard, an
industry effort born within the Coalition for Better Ads. Google is part of the Justice League-type
group, as are Facebook, Procter & Gamble, Unilever, The Washington Post,
the Interactive Advertising Bureau, ad-buying giant GroupM, the Association of
National Advertisers and others.

Air conditioning is an extraordinary example of how technology changes
practically everything. The first
industrial air conditioning system was installed in a Brooklyn printing plant
in 1902. This kind of “process” air
conditioning was designed not to cool down the workers but to improve
efficiency of production, specifically to reduce the humidity that kept ink
from drying properly.

…As Jeff E.
Biddle reveals, it was movie
theaters, restaurants, and department stores that introduced “comfort” air
conditioning in the late 1920s. This
was for the benefit of consumers, a lure to get shoppers to step out of the
heat. Notably, grocery stores, office
buildings, and hotels (places
people had to go to) lagged behind, only sporadically
offering air conditioning well into the 1940s and 1950s.

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About Me

I live in Centennial Colorado. (I'm not actually 100 years old., but I hope to be some day.) I'm an independant computer consultant, specializing in solving problems that traditional IT personnel tend to have difficulty with... That includes everything from inventorying hardware & software, to converting systems & data, to training end-users. I particularly enjoy taking on projects that IT has attempted several times before with no success. I also teach at two local Universities: everything from Introduction to Microcomputers through Business Continuity and Security Management. My background includes IT Audit, Computer Security, and a variety of unique IT projects.